Ask any broker-owner who ran an office through 2008 about their affiliate partners. They’ll name the lenders, escrow officers, and title reps who disappeared when volume dried up. Then they’ll name the ones who stayed. They’ll say those names with a completely different tone. Nearly two decades later, the ones who stayed are still getting […]
Tag: Real Estate Managers
The Appraisal Just Changed. Who Told Your Agents?
Picture a seller in early November. The appraiser has been in her home for ninety minutes. He’s measuring rooms with a laser scanner and photographing the kids’ bedrooms, the home office, the medication on the kitchen counter. She calls her agent. “Is this normal? Where do these photos go?” Her agent has no idea. That […]
Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs
In Great by Choice, Jim Collins describes a ship at sea with a hostile vessel bearing down on it and only a limited supply of gunpowder. If you load everything into one cannonball and fire, you’ll probably miss. Then you have no gunpowder left. The better move is to fire a bullet first. See where it […]
How to Retain Top-Producing Real Estate Agents in Any Market
Top producers are the agents every competitor calls first. Here is what the data and the brokerages that grew through the downturn teach us about keeping them.
The Stay Interview
Most brokerages have an exit interview. That’s the conversation where you finally ask a good agent what went wrong, right after they’ve already signed with someone else. That isn’t a retention strategy. It’s an autopsy. Ask before they leave Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, authors of Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em, have long championed a simple […]
What I’d Tell Every Student Before Year One
Every semester, I watch students light up when they pass the final. They’re ready to go. Here’s what I wish I could tell every one of them before they walk out the door. Your license is permission, not preparation The exam proves you know the rules. It doesn’t prove you can get a stranger to […]
What We Can Learn from 13.1 and 26.2
As some of you know, I’m training for the Long Beach Half Marathon. Part of that training includes cross-training on the bike and the rower, and on the bike I’ve spent a few work out sessions with Ashley Paulson, an iFit trainer, indoor cycling instructor, and marathon runner. Somewhere between the intervals and the climbs, […]
Your 2027 Twenty-Mile March
In 1911, two teams raced to the South Pole. Roald Amundsen’s team held a steady pace every day. In good weather they stopped at their mileage goal, even when they could have pushed farther. In bad weather they still made their miles. Robert Falcon Scott’s team pushed hard on good days and waited out the […]
Could Your Agents Write It for You?
In The Compass Came First, post I ended with a question: can you write the one sentence that tells you which way is north? Then the harder one: could your agents write it for you? Here is a way to find out. At your next sales meeting, hand out index cards with one question: Where is this […]
What 17 Brokerages Taught Us About Growing When Everything Falls Apart
Between 2008 and 2012, the real estate industry went through the worst stretch most of us will ever see. Values collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of agents left the business. Brokerages that looked unbeatable in 2006 were gone by 2010. And yet some firms grew. My friend and longtime business colleague Steve Murray and his team […]